Last night I watched the Borne Identity. I remember that movie coming out as well as its three following. It came out 8 years ago. Eight. Years.  The cars look different, the people dress differently, even the movie quality is different.

When one is young the past is a black hole, an ineffable unknown. The Beatles, Casablanca, even the Cold War, Nixon,  and hippies are just tales we are told, stories recounted, and old recordings that often show up on the History Channel.  As a teenager, coming into your own, there seems like almost nothing existed before. All these things people talk about, all their worries, all their nostalgia, seems so strange and backward. It is because you don’t remember the Nixon scandal, the fear of the inevitable nuclear destruction, or the wonderful excitement of the Beatles at their height.  The childhood you do have is a blur of memories, hardly enough to do more than incite passing nostalgia for Ninja Turtles and Super Nintendo games.

But now its coming to me, history. I remember. Life really began right around 2000 for me, when I entered my teenage years and started to pay attention, started to remember, started to mark the time. Then there were memories. There were “periods” in my life. I recount them now like history. My first girlfriend, my time in the band playing piccolo, my estrangement from the world, my attempt to find a world in Utah, my year of confusion, my leaving the church, my relationship with Kayley–they are there, in my mind, in my past. But they fly away, they move further from the present and I cannot believe the pace at which they retreat. Kayley was already six months ago. My mission fiasco nearly 3 years now. 3 years…

It has been five years since I graduated from high school. And the time flows onward, flies onward. Before I know it I will be here again, five years from now, graduating with a Ph.D and thinking “It was five years since I graduated college!” And it flows on, never stopping. Nor do I want it to stop, only that it becomes untouchable the more it moves. And I can miss it. I can feel nostalgia. I can fill in history. I can remember. I can remember September 11. I can remember Bush. I can remember cell phones, the rise of computers, the introduction of flat screen TVs.

Is this what it means to grow up? Is this wisdom? Or is this merely age and the weight of living onward? What will it be like when I am 80? What if I could live for another hundred years? The distance would grow so long. Would I think back and remember the cute, sweet red-headed girl who was the first to win my heart? Will I recall the existence I have now, the feelings I feel?

Even if I did, it would be as a stranger reading a book, seeing, as a different person, the world of another that has long been past.  So it goes.